Category Archives: WoD
In Other News:
Right about now you’re probably asking: “What about the people who went off to find the Werewolves in Central Park? “ If you are, you are not alone in this. Aenaiyah and Nokoni were asking that too…repeatedly… while I was attempting to stall.
You see, I knew something that they didn’t. I knew that the Werewolves didn’t happen to be in Central Park right then and there. I knew this because their GM IMed me so.
This is a parallel campaign. While my table of Mages busied themselves retrieving a grimoire in France, the table of Werewolves had problems of their own to deal with back home in NYC. A group of Azlu were operating an illegal nightclub in a “place-that isn’t”, existing only in the Spirit Realm and only being accessible for a few nights out of every month. (They were running a module called “Parlor Games”.) Nokoni, being a Thyrsus Mage, is aware that Werewolves play an important role in protecting the physical world from threats attempting to reach through the Gauntlet and tells his fellow Mages so. As a result the Mages are afraid that perhaps someone left that body at the edge of the park in an attempt to cause trouble for the Werewolves of the city. In reality the Werewolves found the body hidden in the truck, about to be disposed of by servants of the Azlu, and one of the less responsible Wolves decided that if they posed the body in the van they could draw out the murderers and deal with them. This happened early on in the second session.
As an amusing side note: at the start of the third session one of the Werewolf players asked if that particular decision made the news, and when their GM started shuffling through her papers to find a handout he knew that no good could come of it.
And so, when my Mage players asked yet again: “So, what about the folks who went to Central Park? Have we made contact with the Werewolves yet?” I had no answer for them. The Werewolves were chasing down an Azlu who had bolted from the fight last session and the combat that followed was taking longer than the conversations at the Mage table. Eventually I was forced to just own up to it. I told them “The Werewolves aren’t at the Park just yet.”
Aenaiyah: “Well, why can’t we just skip ahead until they are at the Park?”
Me: “Ummmm…”
Aenaiyah: Gives me the stink-eye
Me: “I’m not sure when they are going to get there yet. I’m trying to find out.”
Aenaiyah: “What do you mean you’re trying to find out!?”
Rex: “Wait-a-minute… these Werewolves we’re trying to make contact with… they wouldn’t happen to be…” points thumb towards the other game table, “those Werewolves, would they?”
Me: Shrugging in a non-committal manner “Maybe?”
Hilarity ensued.
Who Let the Dogs Out?
The Mages have a mystery on their hands. They have a body in a van, and it has drawn a great deal of attention from the mundane world. Not only is the well read though little believed conspiracy rag “Sick Sad World” reporting on this, major news outlets are reporting on it too. This is exactly the kind of thing that draws the attention of Hunters, which makes it precisely the type of thing the Guardians of the Veil are supposed to prevent from happening.
What follows, right after a certain purple haired Brit gets asked a few questions about who she is and why she’s in the city, is lots and lots of research.
WHO LET THE DOGS OUT
A ‘Sick Sad World’ Exclusive Story!
According to this article distributed by an anonymous press (download the PDF at the link above!) some art students from The Cooper Union were witness to the events of the previous evening. Both this article and the previous one, MONSTER IN MANHATTAN, seem to indicate the presence of Werewolves at the club. The van’s headlights were shining on a symbol carved into a tree that is consistent with a Werewolf Territory Marker. The thing is, the body that was found in the van doesn’t look like it was killed by a Werewolf. Werewolves aren’t exactly known for sucking the insides out of a body while leaving the candy shell intact.
Somebody must be trying to call out the city’s Werewolves!
The Mages decide that the best thing to do is split the party. Having noticed the sidebar about the “NBC Production Employee sent home after Wild Ravings”, one group (including resident FBI Agent on Sabbatical Argus Guille, and Moros Mage Rex) will be heading to the station’s offices to track down this employee and talk about what happened. One group: Mastigos Molly, Free Councillor Neils, and the Acanthus child Marissa, is heading off to the college to talk to the students who drew the artwork. The third and final group, Thyrsus Nokoni and the newly met Acanthus Aenaiyah, are off to Central Park to see if they can be not torn apart by the city’s Werewolf community.
At the TV station Argus abuses his FBI credentials to have a chat with the production manager who sent the employee home. She informs him that the employee was working on a story about illegal casinos operating in the city. It takes a while to get inside of one, or even track one down. They move around a lot, and don’t operate every night. He had finally gotten in, without smuggling in a camera because he knew he would be searched, when something happened that drove him totally over the edge. His manager’s suspicions involve drugs. She doesn’t believe he was deliberately taking any, but perhaps the operators of the casino were drugging the gamblers to loosen their wallets. Maybe her guy just had a bad reaction to something that they used. At any rate, she can give the FBI agent her employee’s home address, but obviously she can’t guarantee that he’ll be there. She advised him to see a doctor, but doesn’t know where he actually went after leaving the office.
At the college our intrepid Mages have little problem tracking down the artists they are looking for. Neils, being an academic, knows his way around a college campus and how to chat up the students. Molly, being a Mastigos Mage, can read minds. It’s a pretty potent combo in this situation. The fact the the law enforcement type didn’t tag along doesn’t hurt. The students are more than happy to talk about what they saw. “It was freaky man, they were like… Werewolves or somethin’. Pretty crazy. I mean… I know I was a little high… but this picture is like totally accurate…”
Sick Sad World of Darkness
The second session of the campaign closed with The Loquacious Grimoire happily in the hands of Mysterium Librarian Meijis (and for the record, it is both the book and the librarian that were happy), and our budding group of Mages starting to look like people you could come to trust the safety of the city to. This is why late that night (or early that morning, depending upon your point of view) resident Guardian of the Veil, FBI Agent Argus Guille, received a message indicating that he should go to CNN*s home page immediately. Upon confirmation that he granted the request of the ranking Guardian in the city, I handed him the following:
Clearly it was destined to be one of those days.
The text is as follows:
Gruesome Murder May be Work of Serial Killer, NYPD says
The body of a murdered woman was found near Central Park. The woman, who remains unidentified at this time, was found posed behind the steering wheel of an SUV wearing an evening dress. 5 More bodies found in a nearby alley.
Successful WITS+INVESTIGATION rolls would draw their eyes to the following headlines deftly inserted along the side of the picture among the actual headlines of the day by yours truly:
Naturally, since this was printed on a piece of paper (and since I didn’t actually create a website for any of this) the links didn’t go anywhere for them – nor will they for you. They were, and are, for the sake of a realistic effect only.
And so, Argus decides to rouse the rest of his Scooby Gang and investigate. The following Mages were at the Sanctum at the start of Session 3:
Argus: Guardian of the Veil – Obrimos
Neils: Free Council – Obrimos
Marissa: Apostate – Acanthus
Nokoni: Adamantine Arrow – Thyrsus
Rex: Free Council – Moros
They arrive on the scene to police putting up barricades and trying to get the lookie-loues out of the way. They also spy amid those lookie-loues a young woman with green hair and the aura of a Mage. The decision is made to keep her close since they don’t know who she is or how she might be involved. It is at this point that new player character Molly Carpenter – Mastigos – Apostate joins our intrepid group of adventurers!
Argus does some mad bluffing (MANIPULATION+INTIMIDATION) and amid many successes he convinces everyone that he is currently with the beaureau, and that he is in charge here. Since he is in charge he orders the NYPD officers present to just keep people out of the immediate area while his cracked team of Crime Scene Investigators begins the hunt for the killer!
The body is posed in a van, as can be seen in the “photo” on the website. What can’t be seen in the picture is that the keys are in the ignition, the headlights are on, and the door is wide open resulting in that godawful “ping ping ping” noise going on…and on… and on…
Rex and Nokoni are able to determine that there is no muscle tissue in the body, nor are there any internal organs. Only the skin and bones remain. As can be seen in the “photo”, the eyes are also completely gone. The skin is leathery, and it is difficult to pinpoint a time of death. The usual smell of decay is absolutely not present, but there is an acidic odor present. There is no blood in the body, and as such there is no bruising. “Forensic Gaze” reveals that the cause of death is a deep “V” shaped wound at the base of the sternum that is mostly hidden by the dress that the body still wears.
Neils and Argus detect no magical resonance, and so it would appear that this is not the work of a Mage. It didn’t really look like the work of a Mage, but it’s always important to rule that out! Getting his hands on a fingerprinting kit from the NYPD officers on the scene, Argus is able to determine that there are fingerprints inside the van and on the body, in all of the places you would expect to find them considering the fact that it isn’t bloody likely that this person happened to die while waving hello to someone.
Molly scans the mental state of the crowd of gawkers and doesn’t sense that anyone present is aware of what happened here. She also keeps an eye on young Marissa, who seems to have found something interesting lying in the street.
CNN isn’t the only ones reporting on this:
MONSTER IN MANHATTAN: A Sick Sad World** Exclusive!
(Yes, you can click this link!)
Argus arranges for the body to be removed by a police officer who happens to be in the confidence of the Consilium, and taken to a coroner who happens to be a Moros Mage. This taken care of the group heads to their base of operations at the New York Public Library to figure out their next move, where a young woman with a British accent, the aura of a Mage, and spikey purple hair happens to be sitting in their path.
(*GM’s Note: With all due respect to CNN! I asked myself, what would be the most frightening place for a story like this to turn up, and CNN’s solid reputation for quality reporting made it the only choice.)
(**GM’s Note: When challenged to come up with a name for my campaign’s conspiracy tabloid I could think of no finer tribute to some of the best people I’ve ever had the pleasure to work alongside than naming it “Sick Sad World”. Truth.)
The Turnabout Intruders:
Having been removed from the house of the alleged book thief rather unceremoniously, the Mages decide to regroup at the edge of the grounds. Once Rex has finished telling Nokoni and Marissa about the Argus Follies and everyone has stopped having a good laugh at Argus’ expense, soon to be a recurring theme of the campaign, they formulate a less crazy plan to re-enter the estate under cover of darkness and steal the book from the person who stole it from them. After all, turnabout is fair play.
Queue: Mission Impossible Theme Music
The mission, should they choose to accept it:
- Crawl through the sewer drain uncovered by the Acanthus child, Marissa
- Break into the massive estate house
- Find and retrieve The Loquacious Grimoire
- Bring the book to the NY Public Library Mysterium Reliquary unharmed
- Get Marissa to bed before 9pm EST and head off to the pub for some much needed refreshment
The crawl through the sewer drain went far more smoothly than I had hoped. I blame Nokoni for abusing his powers as a Thyrsus Mage to clear the path of verminous critters. As they make it to the point where they can see the outlet onto the house grounds (way too many characters have the “Direction Sense” merit for me to even bother having them make rolls to make sure they are going the right way, damn them all) Argus goes invisible. Surprise, surprise!
But… attack dogs can still smell him! Hah-ha!
Damn Thyrsus Mage, Nokoni, “Triggers the Lizard Brain” and makes them all playful of course, so they really don’t care about the invisible guy trying to shoot his way through the enormous door lock with his sizeable handgun. You’ll note I said “trying”, not “succeeding”. It’s an important distinction.
Thanks to “Sound Mastery” no one could actually hear the gun shots, but his partners in attempted crime had no problem seeing the rather large holes being put in the wall near but not quite on target with the locking mechanism. It also prevents Argus from hearing his fellow Mages laughing at the FBI Agent’s inability to hit a stationary target. (The GM had no problems hearing them whatsoever.) This one is a job for the Moros Mage! Rex turns the deadbolt into paper so that it will fold and pull right out of the wall. A simple DEXTERITY+ATHLETICS roll later (to avoid ripping the deadbolt as they open the door making it impossible to cover the signs of their passage later – and only because they came up with the idea of opening the door carefully themselves) and they are in.
This leaves Rex saying “You’re up!” to Argus, who attempts to use the Locator spell to try to find a book that he has no sympathetic connection to. As you might imagine, this does not pan out. Neils uses Prime magic to attempt to find any spells that might be securing the book. Sadly, DeLacey does not have the ability to cast Ward spells and so there are no spells to find. Nokoni keeps the attack dogs happy and quiet so that they don’t wake anyone up. Marissa casts a Fate spell and wanders aimlessly to see if she can happen to stumble upon the room the book is in (stupid Acanthus Mages!), while the GM makes WITS+COMP rolls for the book thief and his staff to see if anyone happens to notice that a group of Mages has broken into the building and is wandering about aimlessly.
Naturally everyone at the DeLacey estate who belongs there happens to be having the best dreams they have ever had in their lives and not a single one of them hears a thing. #grumble
Marissa leads the group right past all of the rooms filled with dangerous people and things and right to the room with the book in it. One more paper deadbolt and a quick Post Cognition, to see where DeLacey put the book when he was done with it, and the group is heading stealthily (enough) out of the door to avoid disturbing the dancing sugar plums in the heads of their adversaries. Then it’s back to the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, and from there the portal is reopened and they are back in New York where it just so happens to be Miller Time.
It’s only the end of the second session and already I hate these guys!
Expert Reconnaissance:
Armed with the identity of our book thief, and the possibility of an international incident, our Mages are off to the Delacey estate in hopes of retrieving the stolen grimoire.
Their first step is to case the estate. The Thyrsus Mage consults with some spirits in the area to find that there is not much going on here that has been of any particular interest to them. Every once in a while a delivery van will come and go, or an employee will arrive or leave, and that’s about it. DeLacey himself appears to be a recluse, at the very least he hasn’t been seen leaving the grounds in some time.
The estate is modeled after the Chateau de Chenonceau. As you can see in the picture, the building is only approachable by the stone bridge that connects it from its location in the River Cher to the mainland. There is a guard house on the bridge, and the Player Characters can hear dogs barking on the grounds.
With step one accomplished, they now need some pretense under which to enter the grounds and search for the book. After a few minutes of deliberation (and a quick phone call to their home Consilium) the Mages decide on a cover story involving a rare acquisition at the NY Public Library that DeLacey might be interested in sponsoring. They would love to talk to him about it. As GM, and realizing that I am dealing with a Mage here, I did take the precaution of making it difficult for the players to simply bluster their way through. Sadly they realized that with their connection to the NY Public Library (it is their home base) they could come up with a reason why he might actually want to listen to them. And since they did well with their MANIPULATION + PERSUASION rolls he decided to let them in for an appointment the next day.
Upon meeting DeLacey the first thing that our intrepid Player Characters confirm is that he is a Mage. Whatever his abilities are, they do not seem to involve masking his aura. He is clearly from money, and while willing to discuss topics that he finds interesting, his interest in the Player Characters is limited at best. Our Guardian of the Veil decides to do most of the talking, with two Free Councillors (Neils and Rex) following his lead. As Argus does his best to be distracting (and he does quite well babbling about antique books), his cohorts run various covert magical scans of the area to see if they can locate the book. While they are having a problem pinpointing its exact location, they do sense that it is somewhere in the building.
Our Thyrsus Adamantine Arrow is keeping an eye on the Acanthus child outside. His cover is that he is painting the beautiful estate, and his daughter is with him playing in the grass. He stays at a safe distance, while magically scanning for dangers of the animal or plant persuasion. Aside from the pack of guard dogs things seem relatively safe. Marissa stumbles across a storm drain that might be useful to circumvent the guard post on the bridge if the need arises.
It is at this point inside the estate that our Guardian of the Veil comes up with a bold and cunning plan. He decides that he is going to try to get a piece of hair from Mr DeLacey that he can use to scry on the man after they leave in the hopes of seeing him reading the grimoire. This is not a bad plan. The execution of this plan however leaves a lot to be desired.
Argus starts off with an unsuccessful WITS + INVESTIGATION roll to see if he notices any stray hairs on DeLacey’s shoulder that he can perhaps stealthily remove. A botch result prevents him from finding one. He then decides that it would be brilliant to try to snag a piece of DeLacey’s hair in his watch-band by stumbling into him as they walk and talk.
I imagine you can easily come up with the three letters that were my reaction to this plan, but I’ll give you a hint anyway: they didn’t stand for “Werewolf The Forsaken” when they popped into my head at that moment in time.
So first he has to stumble into DeLacey, he then has to make it appear to be a casual mis-step, and on top of this he needs to snag a piece of the man’s hair in his watch band. This will call for some skill rolls.
- DEX + BRAWL: To execute the stumble maneuver and hit his intended target
- DEX + STEALTH: To execute the maneuver in such a way that it appears to be an accident
- DEX + LARCENY: To manage to snag a strand of hair in the midst of stumbling in such a way that it appears to be an accident.
As it happens, Argus is pretty dextrous, so in theory this shouldn’t be so bad.
He makes the Brawl roll first, and manages to direct his stumble into DeLacey. Next up is the Stealth roll, and he botches it beautifully. Despite this botch he goes for the Larceny roll anyway to see if he can at least get the hair off of the man’s head. Sadly, he rolls a multi-botch.
Now, technically in the World of Darkness you can only get a dramatic failure on a chance die. I am of the opinion that this is a steaming load of crap. The more you know about a thing, the more assured you are that you will pull it off without a hitch, the greater your possible failure can be. The chance of failing in this epic manner is reduced by your skill (represented in game terms by the fact that the more dice you have in your pool the greater the chance that at least one of them will have a success on it), but if you have that much skill and still manage to not just fail but actually botch – well, you have the skill to know exactly what the worst possibly thing you could do is and clearly you did it anyway. My players and I are on the same page here. As a result Argus stumbled into DeLacey on target, but instead of merely bumping into him he caught his foot on the edge of a throw rug and really hit him, knocking them both sprawling to the ground.
Making matters worse: while he did manage to snag his watch band into DeLacey’s hair, DeLacey’s hair was actually an expensive toupee which is now attached to Argus’ watch and dangling from Argus’ wrist.
As you might imagine, it is at this moment that the Mages were escorted off of the property.
In the immortal words of Rex the Moros Free Councillor: Smooth.
Mage Mistress 